“You’ll find you’ve brought too much stuff.”
The words were softly spoken — almost as if to himself — by a retired pastor, a resident of my parents’ retirement community. He seemed to know by observation and personal experience: we take too much stuff with us.

The black and white picture of the B-24 on the front of the time-worn postcard caught my attention. I flipped it over to find my dad’s barely legible handwriting, smeared as it was by an aged water stain. It was postmarked, Dec. 12, 1944, from San Marcos Army Air Field, San Marcos, Texas.

We all like to think of ourselves as patriotic, and good American citizens.
When they play the national anthem at a sporting event, we stand up and remove our hats. When we say The Pledge of Allegiance, we put our hand over our heart. We’ve always done these things because we were taught as children they are the proper thing to do, and they are ways to show respect for our nation and its treasured symbols.

It’s an irony of the modern age that the most devastating kind of sex scandal, at least for politicians, doesn’t involve actual sex. As Rep. Anthony Weiner has learned.
Weiner, who resigned Thursday, assured his own demise years ago when he began sending raunchy pictures and sex-talk messages to random women over the Internet. He would have been better off if he had arranged to meet those women for secret trysts — not that there’s any indication that the women had the slightest interest in meeting Weiner for such purposes.

Many Kentuckians are struggling in this economy, and I know they are frustrated by how hard it is just to stay above water. Home values are falling, automobile sales growth is at its lowest point this year, and manufacturing growth is at its lowest in nearly two years. One in ten Kentuckians are unemployed. And polls show most Americans remain pessimistic about a recovery.

Cindy couldn’t go on our annual pilgrimage to Dollywood this year in Gatlinburg due to her new job. I hated that, but she sure didn’t.
For some reason the idea of missing out on walking all day in 95-degree heat with a pack of howling kids while going from ride-to-ride that astronauts would think twice about getting on didn’t seem to bother her. I warned her how lonely it would be in the house all by herself for five days, and her smile just seemed to get bigger.
Go figure.

As I walked away from the emergency room, I felt a heaviness for my friends who had just brought in their elderly father. They were rightly concerned about his health issues. But their dad wasn’t. In fact, he was angry that his adult children had insisted on admitting him to the hospital.
There he rested on the gurney, pouting because he wasn’t home. His lower lip was turned up, childlike, which enhanced the scowl on his face as he weakly waved me away.
It’s not easy parenting parents.